Legal Sabotage

Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler's Germany

Douglas G. Morris

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781108835008
• eBook ISBN: 9781108883306
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Legal History
• Index: Law

The Jewish leftist lawyer Ernst Fraenkel was one of twentieth-century Germany's great intellectuals. During the Weimar Republic he was a shrewd constitutional theorist for the Social Democrats and in post-World War II Germany a respected political scientist who worked to secure West Germany's new democracy. This book homes in on the most dramatic years of Fraenkel's life, when he worked within Nazi Germany actively resisting the regime, both publicly and secretly. As a lawyer, he represented political defendants in court. As a dissident, he worked in the underground. As an intellectual, he wrote his most famous work, The Dual State – a classic account of Nazi law and politics. This first detailed account of Fraenkel's career in Nazi Germany opens up a new view on anti-Nazi resistance – its nature, possibilities, and limits. With grit, daring and imagination, Fraenkel fought for freedom against an increasingly repressive regime.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Setting the Scene of a Jewish Lawyer, Like Fraenkel, in Nazi Germany
• 2 Fraenkel as a Social Democrat Practicing Law in Nazi Germany
• 3 Fraenkel as an Essayist Supporting the Illegal Underground
• 4 Fraenkel as a Scholar Condemning the Nazi Regime’s Dual State
• 5 Thinking about the Legal Justifications for Sabotaging a Tyrannical Regime
• Conclusion: The Ernst Fraenkel Dilemma
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index